In-depth review: Apple's IPad and iPhone OS 3.2

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iPad software: other notable details

Contacts: Rather than being a simply listing like iPhone, the Contacts app for iPad presents a nice looking interface that shames Mac OS X's Address Book, both in visual appeal and actual usability. You can slide though the alphabet, touch a bookmark to page over to your contact groups and then back to your contact listings, and you actually see the contacts' photos.

Calendar: Like Contacts, Calendar presents a rich display that borrows a lot from the Mac OS X Calendar. But it also adds "touch to inspect" controls to your events in the calendar that make it a snap to edit. And when you edit, you get a familiar iPhone-style entry editor, with date and time spinners. Again, you also get a slider control that lets you quickly navigate through time.

Notes: More room to type, with a nice looking navigation list of your synced notes. Takes advantage of iPhone 3.2's spell correction, which highlights unrecognized words and offers suggested alternatives at a touch.

Maps: The user interface shrinks down into a thin toolbar strip, leaving a vast area open to multitouch perusal. Setting up point-to-point directions is fast and easy. Doesn't yet support Google Maps Navigation, but this could likely be part of iPhone 4.0.

Safari: Again, a mix of iPhone's simple bookmarks and history lists, an alternative to tabbed browsing that lies between iPhone's and desktop Safari's Top Sites. synced links to your desktop Bookmarks Bar (shown below), and a vast expanse of area devoted to the content you're browsing.

Mail: More of that familiarity of the iPhone with a redesigned interface sporting a simple toolbar on top and lots of room for viewing your content. When you receive emails with attachments, Mail will Quick Look view them in place, and can offer to open Office/iWork documents with iWork apps (as shown below). iPhone 4 will extend this feature to other third party apps that open documents.

Photo: Apple remade this application for iPad to show off pinch and hold gestures, making a fun and fast way to find and show off your photos. You can also browse pictures by iPhoto 09's Faces and Places (show below), as well as by album and event. There's also a handy interface for selecting a batch of pictures you can then either copy to the clipboard or send in an email via the touch of a button.

Videos, iPod, iTunes and App Store: Well this is confusing. iTunes is actually the iTunes Store, which is somewhat understandably separate from the App Store. At the same time, iPod actually looks like the desktop version of iTunes. But unlike the iPhone version, it only plays music. If you want to watch your movies, you have to launch the separate Videos apps. This seems a little confusing. Why not one integrated app?

YouTube: Apple's client for Google's YouTube service emphasizes logging in as a user and viewing your videos, subscriptions and favorites. These features were available in the iPhone app, but the new screen real estate on iPad makes it easy to present more options, as well as more videos, larger and in high quality.

On page 8 of 10: iPad overall impressions; iPad's exclusive period of little competition; and Comparisons to previous Apple products.

... With spell checking turned on, words that are flagged as misspelled are underlined in red, and touching the word presents a popup of spelling suggestions (shown below). ...

Dan, There is one thing I'd really like to know from someone who actually has an iPad about the spell check feature. Does it do English?

This is not a trick question. For those of us that use regular original English (and not the US variant), it's important when using spell-ckeck to get the right dictionary. In the current 3.1 OS, there is no spell check of course, but there is language localisation which currently leaves out anything but the US version of English (although it has Croatian for some reason).

Does the iPad and OS 3.2 understand regular original English, and can it therefore spell-check in that language? If it can't, then tens of thousands of English speakers around the world will find it a very awkward writing tool at best. Enquiring minds want to know.

It's targeted at couch potatoes and yet it doesn't have an Infrared port to control blue-ray, dvd, cable box, tv, surround sound, or any of the existing pieces of hardware I have in my living room that apple currently can't replace. I don't want an Apple TV with their low definition "HD" video playback / streaming. I want an awesome universal remote which is what this thing should have been. Awesome being the key word. Having a floppy phono dongle dancing around you have to aim at the TV is NOT awesome. It's lame.

It's targeted at couch potatoes and yet it doesn't have an Infrared port to control blue-ray, dvd, cable box, tv, surround sound, or any of the existing pieces of hardware I have in my living room that apple currently can't replace. I don't want an Apple TV with their low definition "HD" video playback / streaming. I want an awesome universal remote which is what this thing should have been. Awesome being the key word. Having a floppy phono dongle dancing around you have to aim at the TV is NOT awesome. It's lame.

Dan, There is one thing I'd really like to know from someone who actually has an iPad about the spell check feature. Does it do English?

This is not a trick question. For those of us that use regular original English (and not the US variant), it's important when using spell-ckeck to get the right dictionary. In the current 3.1 OS, there is no spell check of course, but there is language localisation which currently leaves out anything but the US version of English (although it has Croatian for some reason).

Does the iPad and OS 3.2 understand regular original English, and can it therefore spell-check in that language? If it can't, then tens of thousands of English speakers around the world will find it a very awkward writing tool at best. Enquiring minds want to know.

I would expect a model purchased in the Uk for example to ship with that version of English.

Testing US version now for you ... The one I have does see colour as incorrect but did NOT auto correct which is interesting. So it seems it is allowing UK English. Let me try another ... Favourite ... Yep it flashed a US spelling but left it and did not do the auto correct as it is on all other misspelled word as typing continues. Hope this helps.

It's targeted at couch potatoes and yet it doesn't have an Infrared port to control blue-ray, dvd, cable box, tv, surround sound, or any of the existing pieces of hardware I have in my living room that apple currently can't replace. I don't want an Apple TV with their low definition "HD" video playback / streaming. I want an awesome universal remote which is what this thing should have been. Awesome being the key word. Having a floppy phono dongle dancing around you have to aim at the TV is NOT awesome. It's lame.

There are also some higher end solutions, too, but they're mostly out of my budget.

I agree that the iPad could make a great remote. I just don't know how many people are going to want a 1.5 pound remote. Probably not enough to justify building it in - adding cost, weight, and battery consumption. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if someone offers an add-on gadget which connects to the docking port to control IR devices.

Remember that unlike the iPhone, iPad is only 3G, so if you live somewhere that AT&T only has EDGE service, it's not going to work.

Do you have a source for this? The cellular tech specs on Apple's store pages for the iPhone and iPad are almost identical, so I see no reason why EDGE wouldn't work. I'll be very frustrated if it doesn't, one of the reason I got the 3G iPad was so that I've infernets connection when I'm home over the holidays (rural Iowa, don't even have dial-up, but do have EDGE service).